


Allies of Iorden

by Eager_Question



Category: TOAFN, The Once And Future Nerd (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Prequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23212681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eager_Question/pseuds/Eager_Question
Summary: Years before the beginning of Book 1: Princes of Iorden, there was another orc trying to get herself into the elves' good graces. This is her story.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1





	1. Prologue

Imagine, if you can, what life is like for a rat. Imagine what it is like to be small, delicious, and when not desired by such salivating predators as foxes or owls, feared by such great beasts as men and elephants. Imagine what it is like to do no more ill than any other natural thing, and yet seem the villain in so many of their whispers. Which is my very poetic way of saying that life is hard for a rat. Life is also hard for a young mother-to-be trekking in the mountains in search for a safe birthplace for her child, but I’d rather start with the rat.

I understand if you find this idiosyncratic, but I swear to you, mindful reader, that there is a reason for my every word. As a moss sprite, I have eons of experience in the telling of stories and could wax poetic about the lives and losses of a multitude of peoples. In the language of all who do not have the faculties to speak, which I am translating here for your benefit, that particular rat’s name was Little White Nose.

Little White Nose was having a very bad day. She had nearly gotten eaten by a fox, and as the sun reached its peak and the day grew long, she grew hungrier. She was scurrying about the plains when she came upon a large loaf of bread. Careful, she slowly made her way towards it, then froze as she noticed the nearby human male glance at her, knife in hand. 

She hid behind a rock, and watched, but the human did not give chase. Instead, he cut out a small piece of bread and tossed it her way. 

“Better eat up, little buddy,” he said, “winter will be upon us soon enough.” 

Little White Nose moved towards the piece in measured steps, then nabbed the bread from the floor and ate swiftly. The human, Doctor Paedair Silberg, decided to take that moment to glance upon the white peaks of the Black Mountains.

He spotted the large, round figure approaching down the mountain’s path. Paedair stared in confusion, uncertain about what it was, until it dawned on him that the creature descending down the mountain was none other than a pregnant woman. Upon this realization, he leapt to his feet—as all proper gentlemen are wont to do—and ran over to her. 

The woman was breathing heavily when he arrived, and leaning the side of a tall tree, yet she nonetheless brandished a knife at him with a quickness only years of practice can provide. 

“Stay away!” She shouted, and the young doctor, who had left Armstrungard just two months earlier, showed her his palms to appease her. He saw the grey of her skin, and the yellow of her eyes, but decided that if not decency, then academic curiosity justified his aiding a pregnant orc.

“Miss... do you need help?”

She stared at him with the eyes of one who has been disappointed in the world a thousand times over, then screamed and bent over. 

“I mean you no harm,” he said, offering her a hand, which she took and squeezed so hard that he wondered briefly if she was trying to break it. He took a deep breath and held on until the pain had passed, and she continued down the path once more.

“I have a cottage near here,” he said. “You can have use of my spare room.”

The she-orc stared at the young doctor with disbelief, but wound up nodding nonetheless as she let him guide her to his home, not too far a walk from the mountain. Once there, he got her water, towels, a cloth to bite on, and a cornucopia of pillows for her comfort. For six hours they were together, as she breathed and screamed, while he stood there, with all of his knowledge, and not a clue of what else he could possibly do but let nature run its course. He found her water, wiped her brow, and did not realize, until after the panic of the birth had passed, that his towel had become the grey tone of an orc’s skin. 

That night, in that cottage, on the outskirts of Silberg, a baby girl was born. Paedair was astonished at the sight--the child could have been mistaken for his niece! She looked so much like a human that he could scarcely believe she had been born of an orc’s womb. 

After the newborn was asleep in her mother’s arms, the she-orc recounted her tale to Doctor Paedair. Her name was Ona. She had been thrown out of her home, and the love of her life murdered. She slowly made her way through the mountains over months, grossly overestimating the speed with which she could make it through. Her plan had simply been to find a cousin of hers who lived across the mountains, and seek his help with the baby, but she never did, and she grew desperate with every day she spent there. 

It was only by Galadon’s grace that he had seen her. 

Were this another story, I could tell you that they lived happily ever after for the years to come. Paedair, who was not the kind of man to marry a woman, was somewhat glad to have a female companion with a child who could throw off suspicions, and Ona was amazed that he would lend her room and board for as long as she wanted, and that he would take such an interest in being a guiding light for her child, going so far as to teach the both of them to read. He would go away for months at a time to Armsturmgard, and then the two orcs would have the cottage all to themselves, with Ona ever-astonished by Paedair’s apparently endless generosity.

Yes, they were happy, for a while. It would be easy to call this the end. But, dear reader, this is not the story of Ona and Paedair. This is the story of the little girl that was born that late autumn night, just as an owl flew through the woods ever-silent, and spotted Little White Nose scurrying under the bushes, safe from its claws for the night.


	1. CHAPTER ONE - INTO THE LIGHT

#  **CHAPTER ONE - INTO THE LIGHT**

Aisling of Silberg was ready for the College of Armstrungard. On her seventeenth birthday, it was all she could think of. Ever since Paedair had told her where he went in the winter and spring, she had been enamoured with the great ivory tower. The idea of the great College of Armstrungard, filled with books and scholars, where everyone was dedicated to learning, just sounded so utopic that it had become her one and only goal in life to study there the very same day she learned of it. 

She was a natural polyglot, speaking orcish, common, and the tongue of the elves with such natural grace that Paedair would have been happy if it had been his only achievement in her education. It wasn’t, though. Aisling was brilliant all on her own. If she had been born and raised with her mother’s people, she may have become a shaman at an early age. It was incredible fortune that she found herself born into a scholar’s house, with so many books and instruments to accelerate her education. 

And so, on her tenth birthday, when Paedair requested to bring her to his colleagues and her mother stated in no uncertain terms that she would not allow her child to be “paraded around those academics”. 

“I assure you, it’s all very safe,” he said with a pleading smile, “they only want to see her, and talk to her.”

“You want to treat my daughter like a dog who can do tricks,” Ona told him, her eyes narrow. Having lived with her long enough, Paedair resisted the urge to clarify that they were  _ really good _ tricks. 

“There’s nothing wrong with being proud of what Aisling has achieved,” he said instead. She gave him a skeptical look. 

It was in that pause, where Ona thought there was no suitable response for Paedair’s blindness to the situation, that the little girl pounced. 

“I’ll do it if we make a deal,” she said from her hiding place behind the couch. Ona groaned while Paedair’s face lit up. 

“And what would you like, darling?” he asked, expecting a demand for chocolate, or a particular book or toy. 

“I’ll go with you to Armstrungard if you let me study there,” she said. 

The two adults in the room were surprised, Ona pleasantly and Paedair less so. He pressed his lips together and looked her over for a long moment, considering what that might imply. What it might do to his reputation, to be the man who let an orc girl into the most prestigious university to ever exist. What might be said about him in the history books. How it might overshadow any research he ever did. Eventually, he stuck out his hand.

“Very well,” he told the little girl. “We have a deal. I will teach you all that you need to be accepted into the College of Armstrungard, if you do a presentation with me.”

Aisling buried herself in books. There was a test that all prospective students at the college of Armstrungard needed to pass in order to get in. Of course, most people passed, but Paedair (while wealthy) was not in a position to allow in someone like her who “merely passed” (or at least, that is how he told it). Instead, she had to ace it. She had to answer every question perfectly, ignore no commas, drop no exponents, forget no dates. Every year for the next six, she would take the exam, and every year she would fall a little short. Every exam was different, and hard, and aimed at people much older than her, but Aisling only became more determined with every “18/20”, and every “37/40” score. 

Then, when she was sixteen, she got it. A perfect score. Of course, Paedair only got the tests after they were administered so she had to prepare and wait for another year. He also put her on a regimen of exercise on top of her studying (“I just want you to impress everybody when you arrive”). 

On the day of her seventeenth birthday, three days before she left for Armstrungard, her mother gave her a present. It was a very small icosahedron she had made out of wood, each face numbered. 

“<<Usually, this would be given to you when you turn twenty>>,” Ona told her in their tongue, as they sat before the fireplace. Ona had taken pains, through the years, to teach Aisling the language of the Six Hills Clan. She was proud to say her daughter spoke it exactly as well as she spoke the tongue of men (barring the more esoteric words, of which she knew a lot more in the latter tongue). 

They did not discuss religion very much in that household. Ona was not particularly religious, and Paedair considered religion “outside his field” and something he was “not academically prepared to discuss”. Aisling looked at the present. Her mother must have spent an eternity shaving it to perfection. 

“<<Mom, I…>>”

She knew, on some level, that this specific token mattered very much to her mother. If not for its theological value, because she had received one such token from her mother before her, and so on. None of Aisling’s studies had taught her what to say in such times.

“<<I want you to promise me that you will be careful,>>” Ona said, placing the icosahedron on the floor, and holding both of her daughter’s hands in her own. “<<Promise me.>>”

“<<I… I promise, mom. I promise I will be careful.>>”

“<<Remember that the world is what happens. Chance rules all. It is not good, it is not bad, it is just there for us. Garedian gives us what she can to see what we will do with it.>>”

Aisling nodded. 

“<<I know you want to do well in Armstrungard. Just… Remember, Asi, you do not need to be loved by everyone.>>”

The girl looked down, and her mother picked up the small icosahedron once more, and placed it directly in her daughter’s palm, curling the younger orc’s fingers around it. 

“<<And if any boy tries to hurt you, you knee him in the balls, understood?>>”

Aisling chuckled. “<<Yes, mother.>>”

The next morning, it was time to pack. The young orc had never left Silberg before, and so did not know anything about what made for proper packing. None of the books in Paedair's library-- and she had read them all, for she had never been one to spend much time out-of-doors or with other children--could tell her much. Surprisingly, it was the novels which held the most aid, as there were some seventy-three of them in that library, and twelve had scenes where the hero packed his bags described in some detail. 

What she gathered thence was chiefly that she should never forget to bring rope and a knife. There was the requisite magical object, but bereft of one, she made do with her quill set and her mother’s die. She packed along her clothes (the vast majority of them, save a specific outfit that she detested, but knew her mother loved seeing her wear). Though Aisling had never wanted for anything in life if Paedair could help it, she had precious few possessions to pack, being naturally frugal and unconcerned with the details of public life, for reasons found as much in nurture as in nature. 

Her bags packed, she hugged her mother by the door and said her farewell. Ona’s tearful gaze made both of the home's scholars hesitate to make good on their plans. Aisling hugged her mother one more time before picking up her luggage and carrying it to the cart behind the carriage.

"Ona, I have made this trip two dozen times over," Paedair told her mother, in a voice that may have sought to reassure himself as much as it did her. "I promise you, she will be fine."

Humans have a curious habit of making promises without quite understanding what they will entail. Paedair could not have known of the calamities that would befall them upon arrival, and had he seen even a faint ghost of them in a dream, he would have refused to allow the now-grown orclet to leave for another year. Still, he gave his word, and one’s word is a powerful thing.

They rode the carriage in silence for some time, the cottage shrinking in the distance until it could not be spotted without the gifts of perception of an elf.

“Aisling… you’re going to have to work really hard in Armstrungard,” he said, “you understand that?” 

She nodded, a determined look on her face, and something about it made Paedair press his lips together very tight. 

“You know, some people will be unkind,” he said, and she shrugged. 

“So long as we all just want to learn, why should that matter?” 

It was then that Dr. Paedair decided to begin questioning the closest thing he had to a daughter on the matters she was supposed to study. Better that than to have to explain that he was the closest thing to an “orc-lover” she would find at the great college.

“...Can you name the four temperaments?” He requested in guise of a question.

“Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic,” Aisling answered. 

“What is the smallest unit of matter that retains its essence?”

“An Oslit.”

“How do you affect matter in the Iordic plane?”

“Affect the will of its Selbiric shadow.”

“How do you create a square one-half the size of one you have been provided without altering its proportions?”

“Diagonally.” She smirked, and Paedair could not hold back a chuckle. 

“Name five regular polyhedra”

“Tetrahedron, Hexahedron, Octahedron, Dodecahedron and Icosahedron.”

“Very good. The first ten primes?”

“Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine .”

“The first ten numbers of the great spiral?”

“One, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four and fifty-five.”

“The name of the headmaster?”

“Ba’at lo-Thy’yr.”

“[[How are you today?]]” He asked in Hyyl’lyg. 

“[[Nervous, but excited.]]”

A proud smile came upon Paedair’s lips. He continued the questioning for the next several days. In honour of it being Aisling’s first true outing beyond Silberg, they stopped at multiple villages and Paedair allowed her to roam free, on the condition that she keep up her hood and be careful who she spoke to. She had to be reminded of the weight the carriage allowed, lest she run away with the whole of the book store’s wares. 

“For headaches?”

“Tea of willow bark.”

“For great pain?”

“Milk of the poppy.”

“If you see a bleeding injury?”

“Put pressure on it.”

“If you need to perform a procedure?”

“Alcohol and fire on the knife first.”

The days turned into nights. They passed through Ironhertz, Freehold, and lastly Guernatal on their way. Aisling did as she was told. She kept her head low, her hood up and forward to hide her red eyes in the cities, and she was careful to be polite to everyone. By the time they were to arrive at Armstrungard, she had a list of fifty-four books she wanted to check out from the library, and a pile of twelve which she had talked Paedair into buying with some pouting. He could never resist it when she found something she really loved. 

The doctor watched the landscape shift in the horizon and found himself lost in thought as the fruit of his labour grew ever-so-ripe for the picking. Over one and a half decades of preparation, and there she was, polite and perfect for exhibition. A part of him felt that something was wrong, but he decided that it must have been just his nerves. Aisling watched through the window of the carriage as they approached and began nearly bouncing off her seat with excitement. It was her turn to begin asking.

“Is that the tower? How many students are there? Are all of the professors elves? How tall is it? Why does it--” 

“Aisling,” Paedair said, putting a hand on her arm and pressing it down. “be quiet. I will answer after the presentation.” 

She pressed her lips together tight, but he could see in her red eyes a silent desperation.

“...Very well.”

“Is that the statue of Ba’at lo’Thyyn? And--is that the pub where you said Anton of Brimshire solved the problem of the catenary curve?” 

Paedair chuckled and comforted himself in the knowledge that he had nothing to fear. Over sixteen years, he had succeeded in shaping Aisling to be the perfect proof. She would face no issue, he was certain. She continued to rattle off question after question, though Paedair knew for a fact she knew most of the answers already, or could have thought of them with time, and was only seeking confirmation.

“--Is that the Th’aar lo Hyyl?” she asked, as they passed by a congregation of elven warriors.

“Yes,” he answered as his nerves returned. “Yes it is.” 

“They look beautiful,” she said, nearly peeking her head out the carriage window as they passed a gathering of four members of the Th’aar lo Hyyl. The Lord Commander had sent a letter saying that she may visit the presentation when he announced it, but he had imagined she would be too busy. Or would at least come  _ alone _ .

The first surprise was that Ry’y lo-Th’yyt was present at all. The second, that she brought her protégé with her. The young half-orc, Lieutenant Colonel Traft, was lean, tall, and the very picture of a perfect soldier. The doctor briefly wondered if she had come to compare and contrast notes on the rearing of orcs, but discarded the idea. Ry’y lo-Th’yyt was known for many things, and academic rigour was not one of them. 

The carriage stopped before a building one block away from the college. Though not half as tall as the ivory tower, Aisling was still amazed by its size. It hosted some twenty apartments, all of them lavish and beautiful. Paedair led the way to his own, on the fourth floor of the building. Its beauty made the cottage she loved seem meagre by comparison. 

"There are so many books!" She shouted with excitement before straightening her posture and pressing her lips tight. Paedair chuckled and she rushed to look over the shelves.

"Yes. The books at the cottage are chiefly those I do not need for research. You'll have enough time to go through these later, worry not. Aisling--"

The orc girl had already made a pile as tall as her arm was long, of books she wanted to read, while he spoke. She had placed it on the table, and was shoelessly standing tip-toed on the footrest to pluck "A Treatise On The Oslit Model of Pathology: New Paths Forward In The Treatment Of Humour Imbalance" from its place in the top shelf.

Paedair chuckled. "Aisling?" 

"I've got it!" She said, and jumped back down to the floor swiftly and placed the book on top of her pile. Her smile grew sheepish. "Sorry, Pa. You were saying I need to get ready?" 

He nodded and she groaned, quickly sorting the books by size to organize her pile.

"I had a dress made for you, for the occasion," he said, and seeing her face sour he added, "you can keep a change of clothes in your bag, and take it off once the presentation is done. Your elvish trousers should be beautiful enough.”

She nodded and rushed to the bath. Aisling was never in need of having her water heated due to her talents with magic. She could often spend a whole afternoon having a hot bath. Having forgotten to bring a book into the bathroom, however, she only took some twenty minutes washing up. 

She had finished drying her body when someone knocked on the door.

"Doctor Silberg?" 

Paedair opened the door and smiled. “Ah, yes, Penelope, was it? Come in, Aisling is just inside.”

Penelope, a beautiful young woman some twenty years of age, came inside and saw Aisling, now in her undergarments, still drying her hair. 

“Fantastic. Miss, if you will sit, I can begin my work.”

Aisling looked at the young woman with weary eyes, but she did as she was told. Penelope opened a bag she had slung on her shoulder, and began pulling out all manner of contraptions. Aisling swallowed, as she knew exactly what they were for. She was going to be made beautiful, over the next several hours. Sometimes she dreamed of becoming an acolyte of an order with a vow of poverty, just to shave her head, so that she would never again have to suffer the pulling, and primping and reorganizing of it. That would not happen that day, though, and so she resigned herself to the ritual.

On the day of the presentation, while the orc girl was subjected to all manner of powders and tools, the Lieutenant Colonel Traft tried to avoid letting his anticipation show. All his life, as far as he knew, he was the only person like himself who had been allowed to shine in the world of the elves. He had met other orcs, of course, but always thieves or raiders. Never a scholar. He knew the child was young, but… still. There was a symbolic value in the presentation he could not quite articulate.

Ry’y nodded to him and led the way into the college, where they would mingle for a while. Traft was aware of the dozens of eyes around him, the many heads he turned. As he walked, conversations paused. He liked to think it was not him, but the Lord Commander instead, whose status and power astonished them so. 

He knew it was a lie, though. She allowed them to wander, and it continued to happen while he was on his own. Once walking around crowds began to become intolerable, he looked for a place to sit, and found himself just outside the hall where the presentation would take place. As they waited to regroup, Traft noted that Ry’y had been carefully watching his every move. Unsure of what more to do, he checked his posture and pulled out a pocketbook of Wisdom and Sayings of Galadon. It was given to him by a priest--to “tame” the beast within him--and it actually made for very curious reading. 

He opened it up to the page where he’d left off, and began to read. 

“Everything in the world falls in a natural order,” the book went on. “From the animals in the field, to the way to make bread, to the way buildings are erected, and to the way people are divided. Plants and animals, mem’yet and hyl’yet, night and day. All through the world, there are natural divisions and natural patterns that we fall within...”

Such passages often made Traft wonder. He had been chosen for the Tha’ar lo Hy’yl. And as an orc, one could say that was unnatural. Yet… every other soldier had also been chosen, had also been plucked from another life they might have had. Why would their situation truly be more natural? Was it not simply more  _ expected _ ? Was change not natural as well?

Paedair took a deep breath to steady his nerves as Penelope finished making Aisling presentable to the Lord Commander and his colleagues. As Aisling stood up and twirled in her dress to make certain she was finished, something inside the scholar relaxed.

“You look amazing,” he said, a soft smile gracing his face.

“I better, after all that,” the orc girl said with some annoyance, clearly fighting the urge to claw at the clips on her hair. Paedair laughed.

“I’m proud of you, Asi. You’re going to show the world just what someone like you can do,” he said. Carefully--so as to avoid undoing any of Penelope’s hard work--Paedair pulled Aisling into an embrace. "You are brilliant, and kind, and you have everything you need to thrive. You are going to amaze them all." 

After a moment, Aisling made a noise. 

“I can’t breathe, Pa,” she choked out.

“Sorry!” the scholar said, and let go. “Oh, and look at the time!”

Their moment of tenderness had delayed the two Silbergs, and they were running out of time for their last-minute preparations for the presentation. They bid Penelope farewell and began to rush on their way to the hall where the presentation was to be held.

“The three kinds of triangles?”

“Equilateral, isosceles and scalene.”

They had to be careful with the dress as they walked. It was one of those garments that are deliberately designed to be fragile, so that to wear one is to signal to all who see you that you can afford such fragile things and their upkeep.

“Define intransitivity.”

“It’s a property of relationships that don’t carry over.”

They made their way into the college, through its long curved hallways and towards the room that they had previously booked.

“And carrying-over means..?”

“That the key consequences of the relationship are replicated in every other relationship nested within the set. So, for example, if all of the stuff in your library is in the apartment, and the book is in the library, then the book is in the apartment.”

“And an example of intransitivity would be?”

“If Gunter Guernatal is the father of the prince, and the prince fathered a child, King Gunter would not be the child’s father, because that relationship does not carry over.”

It was a very large room. 

“Exactly,” said the doctor, and opened the door for the girl.

When they entered the room, only the Knights of the Wood, their Lord Commander, and Lieutenant Colonel Traft, were inside. The presentation was not for another twenty minutes, but there they were, watching. Paedair led Aisling to the stage, where she, but for her eyes, looked the very image of a proper young lady. Her hair had been straightened with hot rods, her dress made to measurement and adjusted to be marginally tighter than was comfortable.

They walked down the stairs carefully, with Paedair marking the pace to be certain they did not seem nervous in the eyes of the Th’aar lo Hyyl. Aisling’s eyes lingered on Traft as they passed him, and his eyes lingered on her. Both felt as though they were transgressing some rule. There, in their spotless clothing, with their received pronunciation Hyyl’lyg accents at the ready, their perfect posture and their necessary and honed ability to regurgitate whatever was required of them, they felt as though they were intruders who had swindled their way inside. They were not in a position to speak to each other, there was not enough time, but for a moment their eyes met and they gave one another the briefest of nods. 

They were not very eloquent nods. They did not say a whole treatise on their shared suffering, or ask any questions. If they said anything, it was “I see you too”. 


End file.
